


Doppelgänger Redux

by jdale



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Awesome Elizabeth Weir, Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Elizabeth Weir Needs a Hug, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode: s04e04 Doppelganger, F/M, Fake Character Death, French Kissing, Gen, Hugs, John Sheppard Needs a Hug, Love Confessions, Nightmares, Pillow Talk, Sharing a Bed, Sleepwalking, Stargate Malfunction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-26
Updated: 2019-12-29
Packaged: 2021-02-26 01:13:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21974878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdale/pseuds/jdale
Summary: The fourth-season episode “Doppelgänger” rewritten for the third-season cast.
Relationships: Carson Beckett & Elizabeth Weir, John Sheppard/Elizabeth Weir
Kudos: 13





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Rather than completely rewriting the entire episode, I’ve just rewritten those scenes where I felt that the substitution of Carson and Elizabeth for Keller and Carter, respectively, would cause a noticeable enough difference in how the scene plays out to be worth rewriting. Scenes that are wholly or mostly unchanged from the original episode have been omitted from this retelling, so it will be helpful to have seen “Doppelgänger” recently. If you haven’t, a transcript of the episode is available [here](https://stargate.fandom.com/wiki/Doppelganger/Transcript).
> 
> This first scene is Carson’s entity-induced nightmare.

Carson was asleep in his quarters later that night when he was awakened by his radio crackling to life. _“Medical team to the gate room. Medical team to the gate room.”_

Instantly alert, Carson looped his earpiece over his ear and touched the transmitter switch. “On my way.”

He made the trip from his quarters to the gate room in record time, and when he arrived, he found two nurses waiting for him and his equipment ready for use. “Who’s the patient?”

“Lorne’s team had a run-in with the Wraith,” John informed him. “They’re on their way back, they’ve got two wounded.”

“How far out are you, Major?” Elizabeth asked into the radio.

_“Thirty seconds,”_ Lorne’s voice reported. _“We’ve got a flight of Darts hot on our tail, so we’re gonna need you to close the shield as soon as we’re through.”_

“Understood,” Elizabeth replied.

There was a muffled noise in the background, then Lorne shouted, _“Dammit! One of the drive pods just took a hit!”_

“Can you get it retracted far enough to fit through the Stargate?” Elizabeth asked.

Lorne ignored the question, instead warning, _“Clear the gate room! We’re coming in too steep!”_

Carson and the two nurses rushed up the steps at the back of the gate room just in time to avoid being crushed as the Stargate vomited out a misshapen mess of metal, glass, and human flesh that Carson assumed must have been the remains of the Jumper Lorne’s team had been in.

“Rodney, what happened?” Elizabeth asked.

“They must’ve taken a hit just as they were crossing the event horizon that scrambled the gate’s buffer and caused it to remolecularize them wrong,” Rodney speculated.

“Can you believe this?” John asked Carson, his entire demeanor reminiscent of a five-year-old on Christmas morning.

Carson wanted to vomit. Being butchered by a Stargate malfunction was quite possibly the grisliest way to die that the doctor could possibly think of, and here Colonel Sheppard was acting like this was cause for celebration?

* * *

Carson had no more time to ponder this, as he was suddenly launched bolt upright in bed, drenched in sweat and struggling to catch his breath.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This excerpt starts with the second breakfast scene (the one that originally had them talking about _Alien_ ) and goes on through the next few scenes following that one.

“It was the most unsettling thing I’ve ever experienced,” Carson told them.

“You said that after we had the run-in with the Wraith hallucination device on M1B-129,” Rodney said dismissively.

“This was worse,” Carson replied. “Major Lorne and his team had just been fused with the Puddle Jumper they were traveling in by a Stargate malfunction, and Colonel Sheppard’s over here acting like this is the greatest new discovery we’ve made since Atlantis itself.”

“Look, I really don’t see what the big deal is,” Ronon put in. “I mean, it’s just a few bad dreams, right?”

Carson gave him a _look_. “Come on, Ronon, ye cannae tell me ye don’ find it at least a little strange that in the span of two nights, you, me, and Teyla have all had incredibly vivid nightmares starring Colonel Sheppard?”

“And in all three cases, he was acting most unlike Colonel Sheppard,” Teyla added.

“I haven’t,” Rodney pointed out.

“Have ye had _any_ nightmares recently?” Carson asked.

“Not a night goes by,” Rodney began in earnest.

“Any that seemed out of the ordinary?” Carson clarified.

Rodney’s face lost some of its enthusiasm. “No, not really.”

Carson sighed. “Look, I know the human brain is wired to look for patterns even when there may not actually be any, but…does anyone else find this even a little concerning?”

* * *

“I know I don’t exactly have much evidence for this, Elizabeth,” Carson admitted, “but the nightmares just seem too similar for it to be a coincidence.”

“It’s alright, Carson,” Elizabeth assured him. “After everything we’ve seen out here, there’s very little I wouldn’t believe. Any theories what might be causing it?”

Carson shook his head. “No. Only that it seemed to start shortly after Colonel Sheppard touched that crystal on M3X-387.”

Elizabeth’s brow knit in worry. “I thought you did a full examination of him and found nothing wrong.”

“I did, but without knowing specifically what I was looking for, I could easily have missed something,” Carson replied.

“Doctor Weir?” one of the control room technicians interrupted. “There’s been a disturbance in the crew quarters atrium. Security’s been dispatched.”

Elizabeth nodded to the technician and motioned for Carson to follow her downstairs. When they arrived, they found Lorne with his gun raised and pointed at John.

“What’s gotten into _me_?” Lorne asked incredulously. “No, no, no, don’t you try to put this on me.”

“Major, why don’t you lower your weapon and we can work this out like civilized human beings?” Elizabeth suggested.

“He’s a Replicator!” Lorne protested.

Carson’s mouth dropped open in shock. “Laddie—”

“What, you don’t believe me? Okay, I’ll shoot him, you’ll see,” Lorne said, cocking the gun.

“Whoa, easy!” John said, the slightest hint of panic creeping into his voice. “That won’t be necessary. I’ve got my hands up in a very non-threatening way.”

Elizabeth turned to one of the Marines. “Get an ARG down here.”

The Marine looked at her in disbelief. “Ma’am?”

“You heard me, Sergeant!” Elizabeth snapped.

Cowed, the sergeant snapped to attention, then spun on his heel and departed.

“You believe him?” John asked Elizabeth incredulously.

Elizabeth shot John a look that said, _Trust me._ John merely raised one eyebrow at her in response.

On seeing the exchange of glances, Lorne’s expression changed to one of sudden realization. “You’re one of them, too,” he breathed, adjusting his stance so that his weapon now pointed at Elizabeth.

Something changed in Elizabeth’s demeanor. “Major Lorne—”

Seeing the rest of those gathered still unmoving, Lorne ordered, “Don’t just stand there, shoot them! Shoot both of them!”

Before anyone could react, a stun blast from Ronon’s particle magnum caught Lorne square in the chest, and he crumpled to the ground, unconscious.

* * *

“And you think this has something to do with the crystal I touched?” John asked skeptically.

“Aye,” Carson responded. “The first reports started coming in shortly thereafter. It’s not just Major Lorne. In all of the cases that have been reported thus far, the patient reported you being a significant negative presence in the nightmare.”

“I can’t control that!” John protested.

“No, but maybe something is,” Elizabeth speculated.

John raised a skeptical eyebrow at her. “You think someone or something is impersonating me in people’s dreams?”

Elizabeth fixed him with a hard stare. “Need I remind you, Colonel, of the false realities we’ve been shown while having our minds probed by Replicators?”

“These were crystals!” John pointed out.

“What about the fantasy world those mist beings built for us on M5S-224?” Elizabeth countered. “Like it or not, John, it’s well within the realm of possibility that some type of alien entity could have been inhabiting those crystals, and that is what’s causing these nightmares.”

“Well, I’m the one who touched the crystal, so how come I haven’t had one of these nightmares?” John argued.

Heightmeyer’s mouth twisted in thought. “Maybe that’s why you’re the one appearing in everyone’s dreams. You touched it first, and that caused the thing to imprint your image onto itself.”

“And if it is some kind of alien entity, it’s possible it needs physical contact to transfer from one person to the next,” Carson hypothesized.

Elizabeth nodded. “Alright, anyone who’s been in contact with Major Lorne since the altercation needs to be confined to quarters. Rodney: is there a way to manually activate the city’s quarantine protocols?”

Rodney shook his head. “If there is, we haven’t found it. The quarantine system hasn’t exactly been high on our priority list. Besides, if the city thought this thing was a threat, it would’ve triggered a quarantine long ago by now.”

“That assumes the city’s sensors can even detect it,” Elizabeth responded. “That should be our next step. Start working on a way to find it.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This passage starts from when they locate the entity (just after Heightmeyer’s death is announced) and goes through the climax.

Dressed in full hazmat gear, Rodney stopped in the entrance to Elizabeth’s office and rapped on the doorframe. “I’ve been able to calibrate the city’s sensors to detect the entity.”

“Where is it?” Elizabeth asked.

Rodney was unable to meet her eyes as Carson, also in a hazmat suit, stepped around him and took her by the upper arm. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth.”

* * *

John looked at Rodney and Radek in disbelief. “It’s in Elizabeth?”

Rodney nodded. “We’ve completely lined the isolation room in nonconductive material to prevent it from transferring out of her and into someone else.”

“If our theory about its ability to transfer is correct, we’ve got it trapped,” Carson informed him.

“Well, fat lot of good that does Elizabeth!” John yelled in frustration. “If this thing kills people in their sleep…”

“We’ll find a way to get it out of her,” Rodney said reassuringly. In a quieter voice, he added, “We have to.”

 _“Guys?”_ Even filtered through the isolation room’s closed-circuit monitoring system, the tremor of fear in Elizabeth’s voice was obvious. _“I’m starting to get a little sleepy down here.”_

“I can give her a stimulant to keep her awake for a while,” Carson told them, “but I can only keep doing it for so long before we run the risk of the stimulants causing their own problems.”

John ran a hand through his hair. “Worst-case scenario, how much time can we buy?”

Carson shrugged. “Twelve, maybe 16 hours beyond the amount of time she would normally be awake for. At about 20 or 24, she could start experiencing microsleeps, and who knows whether the entity can capitalize on those. Even if it can’t, if she goes much past 36 hours beyond normal wakefulness, she could begin experiencing symptoms not unlike those of paranoid schizophrenia.”

John exhaled heavily. “Give her as high a dose as you dare. Rodney, Radek: keep working on ideas to get this thing out of her.”

“Well, what are you doing?” Rodney asked.

“I’m gonna dial Earth and see if they can give us any advice,” John told him, turning to depart.

Rodney looked hurt. “What, you don’t think I can come up with anything in time?”

John spun back around to face Rodney, his entire body visibly vibrating with tension. “Look, McKay, I’m desperate here! It’s not that I don’t think you can come up with something, I just want to get as many minds on this as we can possibly get, okay?”

Rodney stared at John for a long moment, his expression unreadable, before he finally said, “Yeah. Okay. Call in whoever you need.”

* * *

John, Ronon, and Teyla stood in front of a monitor in the control room, conferencing with Col. Carter over a video feed from the SGC.

“Well, it certainly sounds like you’ve got quite the puzzle on your hands,” Carter remarked.

John’s brow furrowed in thought. “Do you think it knows it’s trapped?”

“Possibly. I mean, its actions thus far as you’ve described them seem to indicate at least basic intelligence,” Carter mused. “Why do you ask?”

“Maybe there’s a way Elizabeth can… I don’t know, communicate with it or something, get it to go peacefully,” John suggested.

Carter frowned. “Well, the thing is, you said Doctor Beckett hypothesized earlier that it might feed on fear, and if that is the case, or worse, if it’s a sociopath like Doctor Heightmeyer said and it gets its jollies from killing its host…it might take the last chance it has.”

“Kill Elizabeth,” John finished dejectedly.

Carter nodded sadly.

“What about survival?” John asked. “What happens when it kills Elizabeth and it doesn’t have another host to transfer into?”

“I don’t know,” Carter admitted. “Hopefully, we won’t have to find out.”

“We could give it a chance to leave,” Teyla proposed.

“Go back into the crystal, you mean,” Carter said by way of clarification.

“Yeah, that sounds like a plan,” John enthused. “Get the entity back into the crystal, throw the crystal back through the gate to its planet, and make a note to never go back to that planet again.”

“Trouble is, what if Elizabeth can’t talk it into leaving?” Carter pointed out. “We still need a way to force it out against its will if it won’t leave on its own.”

“When it was in me, I had no control over what was happening in the nightmare,” Ronon added. “How is she gonna ask it to leave if she’s just along for the ride?”

“I don’t know!” John shouted in frustration. With a sigh, he continued in a more normal voice, “I just wish there was a way I could be in there with her.”

Carter’s brow furrowed in thought. “In Elizabeth’s dreams?”

“Yeah, just be able to be in there with her, give her a little moral support or something,” John replied. “It’s stupid, I know, I just feel so damn _useless_ having to sit on my ass and not be able to actually _do_ anything to help her!”

“It may not be as stupid an idea as you think,” Carter told him, moving to one of the other computers in the room. “Hang on.”

* * *

“I can’t believe you think this is a good idea,” Elizabeth told John severely.

“Hey, it was this or nothing,” he replied by way of explanation.

“Okay, we’re ready when you are,” Carson informed them.

Elizabeth’s expression softened. “Thank you, John.”

“I haven’t done anything yet,” John reminded her.

Elizabeth wanted to hug him, take his hand, _something_ , but she knew the circumstances made that impossible, so instead she settled for telling him, “Whatever happens, I won’t have had to face this thing alone. That’s reason enough to thank you.”

“Ready?” Carson asked.

“I don’t suppose we can safely move the beds any closer together?” Elizabeth inquired.

Carson shook his head sadly. “I’m sorry, Elizabeth.”

Elizabeth sighed. “Alright. I’m ready.”

Carson looked up toward the observation room and announced, “Administering sedative.”

* * *

Elizabeth found herself on a cot in a surgically clean white room. The door opened and a bearded man wearing a white lab coat over a navy suit and tie entered.

“Good morning, Doctor Weir,” he greeted her. “I’m Doctor Adam Fletcher.”

Elizabeth’s heart sank. She had known on some level that this would be what she would have to face, but having the suspicion confirmed for her…she wanted to cry. _Where are you, John?_

She played along with Fletcher’s game until he gave her the opportunity to ask to speak to someone about the treaty. “His name is Lieutenant Colonel John Sheppard.”

When John arrived, she smiled and pulled him into a hug. “Oh, John.”

“Um…hi?” John said awkwardly.

“Thank God you’re here,” she continued.

John raised one eyebrow. “Uh…who are you, exactly?”

 _Oh, no,_ Elizabeth thought, suddenly remembering that in every other incident, the entity had taken on John’s appearance. _No, no, where is_ my _John?_

Despite herself, Elizabeth said, “I’m Elizabeth. Elizabeth Weir? You’re my second-in-command on Atlantis?”

“Atlantis? What the hell are you talking about?” John— _no, it’s the entity, it just looks like John,_ Elizabeth tried to tell herself—asked.

Elizabeth tried to run, tried to keep her mouth shut, but she seemed to have lost control over her body. “I saw something special in you, John! I recruited you to join the Atlantis expedition myself!”

“Look, I’m only here because General Mansfield ordered me to come see what this was about,” Not-John told her. “Now, I don’t know who you are or how you think you know me, but I don’t have time to waste on the demented ramblings of an ex-desk jockey who fell off her rocker when she realized she couldn’t hack it, so if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to my unit.”

She knew in her head that it wasn’t really him, but hearing a figure with John’s face tell her in John’s voice that he didn’t know her was too much for Elizabeth’s heart to bear, and she fell to her knees as sobs wracked her body.

Suddenly, she felt a hand on her back, and a familiar voice drifted down from behind her, “Hey, it’s alright, Lizbeth, I’m here.”

Elizabeth smiled in relief. “John.”

“Well, lookie-lookie-lookie,” Not-John singsonged. “It seems I have a twin out there who actually believes the blather you’ve been spouting.”

“Don’t listen to him, Elizabeth!” John said encouragingly. “None of this is real.”

“He’s just as insane as you are!” Not-John shot back, jabbing a finger at John. “Your whole life, everyone you ever thought was a friend, they’re all just delusions!”

Elizabeth bit her lip nervously. “John, I’m scared.”

“Don’t be,” John ordered. “That’s what he wants! Don’t give it to him! He can’t hurt you.”

Not-John’s expression became menacing. “That’s where you’re wrong.”

Marines burst into the room from every entrance and immediately opened up with their M16s, mowing John and Elizabeth down before they could react.

* * *

“Doctor, she’s crashing!” Marie warned.

“Charge to 200 joules!” Carson ordered after a brief glance at the ECG display. He then unzipped the front of Elizabeth’s jacket, exposing her bare chest, before quickly gelling up the paddles and placing them.

“We’re charged,” Marie informed him.

“Clear!” Carson called before pressing the activation button. He glanced back at the ECG and swore under his breath. “300 joules! Come on, Elizabeth, don’t let this thing beat you!”

“Charged,” Marie reported.

“Clear!” Carson yelled, his eyes still on the ECG. “Bloody hell. 360!”

There were a tense few seconds of silence while the defibrillator recharged, then Carson sent a glance skyward before ordering, “Clear!”

When there was still no response, Carson let out a reluctant sigh and looked up toward the observation room. “I’m sorry. I’m gonna have to call it.”

John could see Carson’s lips moving as he announced the time of death, but he was far too stunned for the words to register.

* * *

John was still in shock when Teyla came up to him in the corridor outside the isolation room and said accusingly, “This is all your fault, John!”

John didn’t deny it.

As Teyla stormed off furiously, Ronon was next to arrive. “If you hadn’t touched that stupid rock, Doctor Weir would still be alive right now!”

Again, John didn’t deny it.

No sooner had Ronon departed than Rodney came up to John and backhanded him across the face. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that? I had an idea to save her, and I was pretty sure it would work, too, but _no_ , once you got ahold of an idea that would allow _you_ to be the hero, you wouldn’t even give me a chance to _tell_ you I _had_ an idea!”

“Why weren’t you more insistent on making your idea heard?” John asked weakly.

“No, no, no, don’t you try to put this on me,” Rodney shot back. “I was about as insistent as I could be without resorting to violence, but you were so obsessed with the idea of being able to do it yourself that you wouldn’t even give me the time of day!”

Carson appeared from behind Rodney, his expression stony. “Colonel, your judgment’s been compromised. On my authority as chief medical officer, I’m relieving you of duty.”

John sighed defeatedly. _Did I really not notice Rodney trying to give me another idea?_

As he was turning around, he suddenly caught sight of Not-John quietly slouching against the far wall.

“Son of a bitch,” he muttered to himself, taking a run at Not-John and launching himself into a flying tackle.

* * *

“Clear!” Carson yelled, his eyes still on the ECG. “Bloody hell. 360!”

There were a tense few seconds of silence while the defibrillator recharged, then Carson sent a glance skyward before ordering, “Clear!”

Finally, the ECG’s steady tone cut out and was replaced by a regular, intermittent beeping.

“We’ve got her back,” Marie reported.

Slowly, Elizabeth began to stir. “Wha—?”

“Ye went into cardiac arrest,” Carson told her.

“The entity?” she asked worriedly.

“We forgot one thing,” Rodney said from behind her. “The leads connecting you and Colonel Sheppard to the VR interface also connected you to each other.”

Elizabeth’s expression turned to one of horror. “It’s in him?”

Rodney nodded sadly. “It’s in Sheppard.”

With renewed focus, Carson turned his attention to John’s ECG. Immediately, his expression became concerned. “His heart rate is dangerously high.”

 _“Can you wake him up?”_ Teyla’s voice filtered through from the observation room.

“Theoretically, yes, but in his condition, that could just as easily make things worse,” Carson replied.

“And the entity would still be in him,” Rodney added.

Elizabeth took a deep breath to steel herself. “Let me go back in.”

Carson turned to look at her incredulously. “Are ye daft, Elizabeth?”

“John’s done it for me twice now,” Elizabeth replied. “I’ll be damned if I’m gonna leave him to fend for himself in there when I have a chance to return the favor.”

“That thing very nearly killed ye not five minutes ago,” Carson reminded her. “You’re in no condition to—”

“Carson,” Elizabeth cut him off, her tone brokering no argument.

“Elizabeth, I want to save the colonel as much as you do, but I cannot in good conscience let ye do this!” Carson told her.

Elizabeth eyed him dangerously. “Try and stop me.”

* * *

John was nearly at his wits’ end. Not-John was faster, stronger, and seemed to know exactly what he was about to do before he did it. Every time he went down, it was harder and harder for him to get back up and keep fighting. _Screw it,_ he thought eventually. _Elizabeth’s already dead, and the rest of them all have hazmat suits. If I have to die to keep this thing from infesting anyone else, so be it._

“Get up!” Not-John taunted. “Come on, John! Fight!”

“No,” John replied weakly. “That’s what you want.”

Not-John ignored him. “It’s your fault Heightmeyer’s dead. It’s your fault Elizabeth is dead!”

“That’s where _you’re_ wrong!” a new voice came from the top of the gate room steps.

 _Elizabeth?_ John’s punch-drunk brain thought in confusion. Slowly, he rolled over to face the opposite direction, and sure enough, Elizabeth—or something that looked like her—was slowly descending the gate room steps. With a primal scream, Not-John put his head down and bum-rushed Elizabeth, slamming her backwards into a pillar.

“You can’t win,” he growled.

“Yes, we can,” Elizabeth replied, grinning. “You’re vulnerable to electric shock. That’s how I survived. The defibrillator forced you out before you could finish me off!”

Suddenly, a bolt of lightning shot down from the ceiling and sent electricity coursing through Not-John’s body. John looked on in amazement as a second bolt of lightning shot out, this one dropping Not-John to his knees. With renewed strength, John came over and began to wrestle Not-John toward the open Stargate. Not-John fought back, but the bolts of lightning had weakened him enough to allow John to gain the upper hand and throw Not-John through the wormhole.

“John?” Elizabeth called cautiously.

“Lizbeth,” John replied, still breathing heavily.

Their eyes locked, and they both knew instantly that the deception was over. They closed the distance between them and embraced wearily, drawing strength from the contact.

“Lizbeth,” he repeated, the news of her survival still sinking in.

After a long moment, Elizabeth pulled back and looked up at him tenderly. “Come on, John. Let’s go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Before I went back and rewatched “Doppelgänger” in preparation for writing this fic, I had forgotten how much the plot relied on Carter being able to draw on her decade of experiences as a member of SG-1, so when I went to do the rewrite, I eventually had to bow to that and have the team bring Carter in to consult over videoconference since I couldn’t find another way to get the VR tech into the equation.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This last scene occurs later the same evening, after the crystal, with entity inside, has been taken back to M3X-387 (taking the place of the mess-hall scene at the end of the original episode).

Dressed in a faded AFROTC T-shirt and plaid lounge pants, John came to a stop outside Elizabeth’s quarters and activated the door chime. “Elizabeth?”

_“Come on in, John,”_ she called.

He waved his hand at the sensor and stepped inside. Elizabeth was lying on the bed in a cozy-looking pair of pajamas, an open book in one hand.

“Hey,” he greeted her. “You looked pretty rattled at dinner tonight, so I thought I’d drop by and…see if you needed an ear.”

Elizabeth smiled, setting the book on the nightstand and patting the open space next to her on the bed in a silent invitation for John to lie down beside her, one he quickly accepted.

“So,” John began, “you wanna talk about it?”

Elizabeth sighed. “How much did you see?”

“All of it,” John told her. “I don’t know why I couldn’t get through to you until other me showed up, but…I saw it all.”

“The first time I landed in that hellhole, it was a creation of the nanites Niam infected me with,” Elizabeth said quietly, unable to meet his eyes.

John paled. “Wow. That’s…wow. I mean, that looked scary enough on its own, but…knowing that’s where it originally came from…I can’t imagine…”

Unable to express his sympathies in words, John drew Elizabeth into his arms and held her close. For a long moment, the only sound was that of their breathing; then, John gently released her, and Elizabeth continued her tale.

“This time was worse,” Elizabeth confided. “Even knowing none of it was real…the first time, it was General O’Neill instead of the nightmare you, and he—it—claimed to know me from the treaty I was negotiating when I allegedly had my nervous breakdown. That time, you were the one who was finally able to break through and give me the strength to find my way back home, so this time, to have a figure with your face and your voice tell me it was all a lie…”

Seeing Elizabeth on the verge of tears, John pulled her into an embrace once more.

“Hey, it’s okay, Lizbeth, it wasn’t real. None of it was real,” he said soothingly, placing a gentle kiss in her hair.

“I know it wasn’t, but…I just felt so alone,” Elizabeth replied.

John’s heart broke for her. “Oh, Lizbeth. I’m so sorry. I—I don’t know if it was something with how McKay had the VR interface configured, or if the entity was somehow stopping me, or if I just wasn’t trying hard enough, but…I’m sorry I couldn’t be there for you sooner.”

“It’s alright, John,” Elizabeth assured him. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Even so, I wish I could’ve been there for you sooner,” John repeated.

Elizabeth nodded. “Thank you, John.”

They lay there in silence for a moment before Elizabeth said, “John, I…until now, I’ve never spoken to anyone about what those nanites put me through, and I probably never would have if not for what happened today, so…I would appreciate it if you kept this to yourself.”

“Of course, Lizbeth,” John replied instantly. He was silent momentarily, and then he said, “I know this isn’t anywhere near the level of what you went through, but…did I ever tell you what I saw on M1B-129 when that Wraith device made everyone hallucinate?”

Elizabeth shook her head minutely. “No.”

“I served in Afghanistan the first few months of Enduring Freedom,” John began. “February of ’02, one of my buddies, Captain Lyle Holland, was shot down by the Taliban about eighty miles south of Kandahar. Command was dragging their heels on mounting a rescue, and I thought Holland would probably be dead by the time they actually sent someone, so I…went myself.”

“Without authorization,” Elizabeth filled in.

John nodded. “Ran into a few Taliban on my way out to his last known location. One of them managed to get off a lucky shot that knocked out my tail rotor, and I had to make the rest of the trip on foot.”

“Were you able to find him?” Elizabeth asked.

John sighed. “Found him, but I wasn’t able to get him back to base. We found somewhere to hide out overnight, it seemed safe enough that I felt comfortable trying to get some shuteye, and…when I woke up, he had died.”

“That…” Unable to find the words, Elizabeth exhaled slowly and instead asked, “And this Wraith device forced you to relive that mission?”

John nodded. “Yeah.”

This time it was Elizabeth who initiated the hug. No words were exchanged; none needed to be.

“John,” Elizabeth said finally, “do you know why I made you the offer to come to Atlantis?”

“Because I could control Ancient technology like it was second nature?” John replied.

Elizabeth smiled sheepishly. “Well, yeah, I guess that was part of it, but…you’re not like other military men, John. You _care_. Honor, loyalty, integrity…I’ve seen a lot of military men lose sight of those when faced with the realities of war, and…I hate to speak ill of the dead, but Colonel Sumner seemed like the type who would have few qualms about doing what was expedient instead of what was right.”

“I certainly don’t think it would’ve kept him from sleeping at night,” John agreed.

“That wasn’t all, though,” Elizabeth continued. “You have this remarkable ability to never lose sight of the human element. That first or second night we were here, when you and I got into that argument over sending a team to rescue our people that had been taken when the Wraith attacked Athos? When I looked at that situation, I saw numbers and probability of success and the need to balance the chance of getting our people back against the chance of a failed attempt costing us even more of our people. You looked at the same situation and saw people— _our_ people—languishing in a prison cell somewhere, and how we owed it to them as a matter of basic human decency to at least _try_ to help them.”

“Well, I remember…not that long after I started ROTC, one of our instructors was talking about how you never leave people behind, and the importance of abiding by that principle,” John told her, “and one of the other cadets raised the point about the needs of the many versus the needs of the few, and don’t you sometimes have to leave someone behind if the alternative is even worse, and I remember the response our instructor gave to that was to ask the kid, ‘what if it were you? What if you were the one shot down in enemy airspace, or you were the one wounded during an extraction? Wouldn’t you want your buddies to do their damnedest to make sure you got to come home with them, even if it meant they had to risk their own asses to make it happen?’ And, especially for me, having grown up in a home where my father didn’t really care about what I wanted or who I was as a person…that answer really stuck with me.”

Elizabeth smiled. “Exactly. And there have been…a lot of times over the three years since that night that I have wished I could think more like that—more like _you_. Just set aside all of the diplomatic training and all of the micro-analyses and picking apart that I’ve done so many times I barely have to think about them anymore, and just do what I can feel in my heart is right without needing any other justification than that.”

Seeing John’s look of amused skepticism, Elizabeth patted him gently on the shoulder and told him, “You’re a good man, John, whether you believe it yourself or not.”

John’s expression turned contemplative. “I couldn’t do it without you, Lizbeth. You know, I don’t think I ever properly thanked you for giving me a chance. Most people, military or civilian, would’ve written me off as soon as they found out about my black mark in Afghanistan, but you…didn’t seem to care about that.”

“Well, I wouldn’t say I didn’t _care_ about it; actually, as strange as this may sound, it was actually to some extent a point in your favor,” Elizabeth replied. “It told me you were the type of man who wasn’t afraid to do what you thought was right even if not everyone agreed with you that it was right and even if it might not be in your own best interest. I guess what it really comes down to is…I saw in you a part of myself that had fallen by the wayside many years ago and that I wanted to reconnect with.”

John’s brow furrowed. “Wait, you knew about Holland?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “I didn’t know the details of what had happened, but…I knew from interacting with you what type of person you were, so I figured it must’ve been something like that, some sort of incident where you tried to do the right thing when no one else would, and the military scapegoated you because they didn’t want to admit that they had been wrong.”

“Well, it wasn’t that they were _wrong_ necessarily,” John responded, “just…they were trying to make the rescue a joint op with the Afghans, and trying to get everything coordinated between us and them was bogging the whole thing down to the point where Holland would probably have been long dead by the time they were actually ready to go.”

“As I said,” Elizabeth pointed out, “the military lost sight of the fact that it was a time-sensitive op, you didn’t, and the military made you out as the bad guy because they didn’t want to admit they’d screwed the pooch by letting it wait too long.”

“Well, in their defense—” John began.

“No, John,” Elizabeth interrupted. “The fact that you weren’t able to save him doesn’t change anything. If anything, it only proves the military took too long.”

John sighed. “Lizbeth…you act like I’m some kind of…knight in shining armor or something, and I’m…I’m really not. As long as you, and Rodney and Ronon and Teyla, and Carson, and—as long as this city and its people are safe, the rest of the world can kiss my ass.”

Elizabeth got a chuckle out of that. “No, you’re—you’re right, John. You’re not just _some_ knight in shining armor, you’re…you’re _my_ knight in shining armor, and…and I love you, John.”

John’s eyes widened. “You—?”

Elizabeth leaned in and gently pressed her lips to his. “Yes, John. Is that so hard to believe?”

John sighed. “When the entity first jumped from you into me, it tried to trick me into thinking I’d woken up and you were dead. That…it was the worst feeling of my life. You were the first person since my mother died who I felt like actually cared about _me_ , not just what I could be for them or do for them, and you were the first person… _ever_ to actually stick your neck out for me, and…”

He was clearly fighting back tears as he finished, “…and I had a chance to save you, and I blew it.”

Elizabeth pulled him into her arms and held him close. “Oh, John.”

“If you hadn’t shown back up when you did…it wouldn’t have been pretty,” John admitted. “I was about ready to just let the thing take me and hope that it would go back into its crystal when it realized it couldn’t get to anyone else. And then you showed up, and…once my brain processed that it was _you_ and you were _there_ and you were _alive_ , I just…I just knew it was all gonna work out okay. Seeing you gave me the strength to get back up and keep fighting. So…yeah, I love you, too, Lizbeth.”

Elizabeth smiled and leaned down for another kiss, this one long and languid. John’s hand slowly slid up Elizabeth’s back and entangled itself in her hair as the kiss deepened, their tongues gently probing each other’s mouths. When their lips finally parted, the two spent a long moment silently staring into each other’s eyes as they caught their breath.

“Lizbeth,” John said finally, “when I found out that thing was in you…I nearly drove myself crazy worrying.”

“It’s alright, John,” Elizabeth assured him. “I was scared, too, especially because I had a pretty strong suspicion that I knew what nightmare it would make me see.”

“Was it…the one I— _we_ —?” John asked.

Elizabeth nodded silently, and they hugged once more, Elizabeth letting her head rest on John’s shoulder as they did so.

After a long moment, Elizabeth lifted her head, looking up at him with wide eyes, and asked in a tiny voice, “Stay with me tonight?”

“Of course,” John replied instantly.

Elizabeth snuggled deeper into his embrace. “Thank you.”

In that moment, John was simultaneously concerned by how vulnerable she seemed and touched that she trusted him enough to let her guard down and allow him to see how she was truly feeling.

“I’ll always be here for you, Lizbeth,” he vowed, tenderly stroking her hair.

“I love you, John,” she murmured into his shoulder.

John leaned down and gently kissed the top of her head. “I love you, too, Lizbeth.”

Elizabeth smiled as she drifted off to sleep, knowing that with John in her arms and she in his, they could both look forward to a night filled with nothing but sweet dreams.


End file.
